Wednesday morning at the Jamie Whitten building in Washington, D.C., Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and other USDA officials will honor 24 civilian agricultural experts who have returned to the United States from Afghanistan and Iraq. USDA civilian agricultural experts began serving in Afghanistan in 2003 and in Iraq in 2004 to help the people of each country rebuild their agricultural economies.
Primarily, experts serve as extension agents within the military-civilian field units operating in the provinces of both countries; some serve in the respective U.S. Embassies and Ministries of Agriculture. In the field, experts plan and implement reconstruction and agricultural development projects to help Afghanistan and Iraq rebuild their agricultural sectors.